Great Regulars: This corresponds, they say, to the three watches

of the night, suggesting that God roars three times a night. Why does He do this? Because, according to another sage, He is saying, "Woe to the children because of whose sins I destroyed my Temple and burned my sanctuary and exiled them among the nations of the world." This kind of inference, in which similarity of number--three watches, three roars, a three-part lament of God--is made to indicate an essential relationship, is one of the Talmudic strategies that seems most foreign to contemporary reason.

from Adam Kirsch: Tablet: A Talmudic Journey Begins

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